“I shall never change it,” he assured her eagerly.  “We are in a taxicab and I know it’s most unusual and improper, but—­”

“If you hadn’t kissed me,” she declared a moment later as she leaned forward to look in the glass, “I should not have eaten a mouthful of supper.”

They drove to the Milan Grill.  It was a little early for the theatre people, and they were almost alone in the place.  Anna drew a great sigh of content as she settled down in her chair.

“I think I must have been lonely for a long time,” she whispered, “for it is so delightful to get back and be with you.  Tell me what you have been doing?”

“I have been promoted,” Norgate announced.  “My prospective alliance with you has completed Selingman’s confidence in me.  I have been entrusted with several commissions.”

He told her of his adventures.  She listened breathlessly to the account of his dinner in Soho.

“It is queer how all this is working out,” she observed.  “I knew before that the trouble was to come through Austria.  The Emperor was very anxious indeed that it should not.  He wanted to have his country brought reluctantly into the struggle.  Even at this moment I believe that if he thought there was the slightest chance of England becoming embroiled, he would travel to Berlin himself to plead with the Kaiser.  I really don’t know why, but the one thing in Austria which would be thoroughly unpopular would be a war with England.”

“Tell me about your mission?” he asked.

“To a certain point,” she confessed, with a little grimace, “it was unsuccessful.  I have brought a reply to the personal letter I took over to the King.  I have talked with Guillamo, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, with whom, of course, everything is supposed to rest.  What I have brought with me, however, and what I heard from Guillamo, are nothing but a repetition of the assurances given to our Ambassador.  The few private words which I was to get I have failed in obtaining, simply because the one person who could have spoken them is here in London.”

“Who is that?” he enquired curiously.

“The Comtesse di Strozzi,” she told him.  “It is she who has directed the foreign policy of Italy through Guillamo for the last ten years.  He does nothing without her.  He is like a lost child, indeed, when she is away.  And where do you think she is?  Why, here in London.  She is staying at the Italian Embassy.  Signor Cardina is her cousin.  The great ball to-morrow night, of which you have read, is in her honour.  You shall be my escort.  At one time I knew her quite well.”

“The Comtesse di Strozzi!” he exclaimed.  “Why, she spent the whole of last season in Paris.  I saw quite a great deal of her.”

“How odd!” Anna murmured.  “But how delightful!  We shall be able to talk to her together, you and I.”

“It is rather a coincidence,” he admitted “She had a sort of craze to visit some of the places in Paris where it is necessary for a woman to go incognito, and I was always her escort.  I heard from her only a few weeks ago, and she told me that she was coming to London.”